And so long as Pavro is all talk, he'll keep his hide in one piece. I'll just mention this from the start: Vors ain't your daddy's paladin. He's still as stalwart as they come, but he's a bit more...homespun than most holy warriors.

This coming Saturday I'm off to Hong Kong for a week and a half for a wedding (not mine). I suspect getting online in Hong Kong won't be too hard but I certainly won't be on as much or long as normal (and small chance of not at all). The Voice of Wisdom has full permission to do what he will with Thandion particularly don't let my absence cause a slow down in combat (or in the story in general).

Oh damn, sorry to here that VOW. Obviously real life is the priority, I wish you the best of luck getting something soon - that really sucks, and is more than enough to take the wind out of anyones sails :( It seems to be tough all over at the moment, I've got two degrees and I'm doing barwork, which, while fun, is hardly lucrative.

Okay, so what do we want to sell? I'm for selling the Cure Moderate potions personally. We've got 2 longsword, and two sets of studded leather armor from the hobgoblins. We also have "a bunch of small dogslicers, small light crossbows, some barely worth it small sized leather armor".

I'm assuming all the goblins were carrying these? Can we get an exact figure, since the light crossbows in particular are fairly valuable. Half value for resale is...

Longsword at 7.5gp each
Studded Leather at 12.5gp
Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds at 150gp
Light Crossbows at 17.5gp each
Dogslicers at 4gp each
Leather Armor at 5gp each

I'm guessing at least 10 goblins? So we are looking at something like 265gp from all the goblins gear, another 40gp from the hobgoblins, and 150gp from the Potion for 455gp. Then Pavro gets 10% over the normal amount so that would be a round 500gp - assuming 10 goblins.

Did the goblin guy on the dog have any better stuff or anything VOW? And can you give an exact number on the goblins?

Breakdown of loot
The initial surprise: 8 gp total (after the 10% boost) for the really, really crappy stuff the 1st wave of goblins had; even most goblins would probably shun this stuff; it's tolerable scrap, not much else

So we have, counting the sale of the cure moderate wounds potion - that cool folks? - but keeping the cure light...

8gp + 61gp + 140 + 44 + 165 + 186 + 30.25 + 26.4 = 599.65gp can I round that up to 600gp? If so that works out as 100gp each effectively.

I've ignored Sheriff Hemlock's "gift" of the longsword we won, because frankly I'm pretty unimpressed with his right to give it. If anyone wants to keep any of that I would suggest we go with deducting the value, from your share, remeber you will need to deduct Pavro's extra 10% to, everyone cool with that? Seems easiest to me with nice even shares of 100gp.

600 gp is fine; if Thandion wants to keep the sword, he can do so without worrying about the value of it. No need to screw up a perfectly good even number for the sake of a basic weapon. Fancier stuff, I care about, but basic stuff isn't worth sweating over.

I'll let you know when to level. All things considered, it seems like it will be a bit easier to manage and allow me to focus on the campaign itself more, and on the underlying math less. It also helps tremendously that the book includes level expectations, making it very easy for me to keep track of where we are.

It's not actually moot, because several of your party members, and all of the NPCs with direct knowledge of the scene viewed it that you were working as a group, and thus were all bound to what seemed to be the group decision. I have no problem personally that you didn't feel thusly bound, but that is something you will have to hash out in character before we go too much farther, especially since it's doubtful that Thandion is going to voluntarily stop taking prisoners. In short, it's up to the party to decide how they want to handle such things; I simply run with what the party gives me.

Yea, I don't think that will happen. Marcoul is happy to work with others, but he would never allow another to speak for his decisions or bind him into an agreement, without his prior consent. Considering who he follows, he is very careful of what he agrees to or says he will do. When all of the stuff went down with the Goblin Pavro clearly said "Drop your weapons and talk and we just might let you go - if you give us enough useful information that is." "Might" and "if" leave some pretty large loop holes. I think this is a significant issue that needs to be addressed.

Agreed. Somehow the party will have to reach an appropriate agreement on how to handle such things. It occurs to all of you that arguing about it in public may not be the wisest idea in the world, though.

I don't think any of us had a problem with your character's action based on the G-N-E axis, because Marcoul clearly is neutral. It was the L-N-C axis that we are trying to square with. Even if the character has no moral problem with killing a foe who had surrendered, a lawful character would only do it if that sort of action squared with their code, tradition, or law. My character is not wholly against (or for) your action, he is just confused about Marcoul's hypocrisy.

I really think a great many lawful characters would be fine killing a character who had surrendered had they not accepted that surrender. I went and reread the thread and the only person who said anything close to accepting the surrender was Pavro who rolled a bluff check and hedged his bets significantly. There is nothing I am aware of that makes refusing to accept a surrender unlawful.

Pavro of course is chaotic and would happily ignore any law that he thought was stupid. He would not have emulated Marcoul's action, but he thinks it would have made everyone's lives easier if they weren't insisting upon moaning about it.

If similar things crop up Pavro's likely to go with the flow, but he's not going to be responsible for looking after captives, and Aressa will likely begin to go out of her way to ensure she kills any injured ASAP.

Thandion can you please make a suggestion here, because I am beginning to think your character simply isn't suited to be an adventurer. In PBP if we need to keep up with this we're going to be adding hundreds of posts. If we need to take a prisoner back during an adventure that's going to eat up days if not weeks of real world time.

PBPs already achingly slow and I've always been a firm believer that its better to be upfront about concerns, etc. I've got no issue with the non lethal stuff, its characterful and pretty combat effective, I'm just anticipating wilderness adventure and I'm worried.

So lets say we fight a group of goblins, and three of them are bleeding out and one surrenders. We are, hypothetically, a day away from Sandpoint and on a quest to find a magic mushroom to cure Sheriff Hemlock dire bunion, how does it playout? At the moment it seems that Thandion will try to stabalize all of the goblins and march them back to town as prisoners, correct? Or would we continue on with goblin prisoners in tow? Or release the goblins?

We may be making too big of an issue of this. In all the games you've played, how many enemies have actually surrendered other than those who do to move the story along? Unless VoW was going to have an enemy surrender every time we fight, I don't think this would actually be too much of an issue. In the case of an enemy who merely stops fighting like our goblin friend in the fight above, perhaps we should make an agreement as to what to do.

Avian for one, would be content with driving a single cowardly enemy off saying "we see you again we kill you," unless of course there was some good reason not to (they would give away our position to their friends or something).

I think one issue we need to consider is civilization. A goblin that attacks us in the middle of a rural forest should probably be killed even if he does stop fighting or even formally surrenders. Maybe enemies that surrender should be tied up and told we will tell the authorities where they are the next time we encounter authorities, and if they are found, great, or if they are mauled by wolves, so be it. Just throwing out ideas there. I think the main thing is to have a plan and stick to it.

However, I see no reason we should not take prisoners when the enemy in question is in civilization, like our erstwhile goblin friend. We were heading back to Sandpoint and indeed the sheriff anyway. As a good character I don't think Avian would sit well with killing the thing just so we don't have to drag the goblin back to the sheriff when we were going that way anyway.

I think we are all agreed--except perhaps Thandion--that one thing we should NOT do is keep prisoners in tow as a general rule. Maybe for a special case we might suffer one prisoner for a day or so but we are a task force, not a police force. The lives of our enemies are not our top concern.

It's important to note, that given the chance, that goblin would have simply fled. He only stayed and begged for his life because he had no where to run or escape to. If you don't wish to take prisoners in a situation like that, than leaving an escape route open for them to flee may be a viable option. It acknowledges those who would not see unnecessary bloodshed, but justifies the decision of those who would rather not worry about prisoners by saying that they could have fled but didn't. In short, it gives both sides a loophole. And frankly, when it comes to goblins, all of you could figure out when thinking objectively that the chances of them ratting you out are extremely slim; even if questioned by a stronger authority within the tribe, their ability to answer is likely going to be very limited, as the intelligent ones would know not to return to their tribe.

As for this slowing down the game, it actually is quite appropriate for this particular campaign. It may seem like it slows things down now, but it ties in well with issues and concerns you will have to deal with throughout the adventure as storyline unfolds, which is one reason I wanted you to discuss this in character; it sets later aspects of the campaign up nicely.

Sorry Pavro you seem to have totally the wrong idea about Thandion's priorities, that is probably my fault. I was trying to express that taking prisoners features on his priorities, saving innocent lives is more important which will include just about any quest we are on.

I think Avian has it just about right. Thandion would be happy to leave captive chained to tree with some food while we were out doing a quest. After finishing the quest we can pick them if there isn't a hurry and if the there is we let the authorities know. If we have a particularly valuable captive they kept unconscious over the back of a horse (although I suspect valuable captive will be the objective of any quest we are on anyway.)

In answer to Pavro's hypothetical, Thandion would never suggest abandoning a quest to bring back some criminals. Either leaving then chained up to a tree or in unconscious over a back of horse will work. At times we will be in a hurry and Thandion would be first to suggest ignoring the goblins (letting them escape or die). If the hypothetical situation was different and we were returning to civilization and we weren't in a hurry then sure why not bring along the captives.

Leveling time. HP is handled by either taking half+1 or rolling(rerolling 1 once; if you get it twice, the dice gods just hate you), and you make this decision independently each level. When you are done leveling and shopping, if you could just post the changes, and items bought so that I know that you are ready to proceed, I would appreciate it.